Please help to ignite the Great Re-Awakening in Europe

[Inhocsigno]

Just wanted to report the happy news from our summer sojourning with the mission teams in Greece, we're having a great and rapid expansion of the large and small ministries both. In our home-base in Epirus alone, and just over the summer and with connections within our mission movement, we've had more than 3 dozen American families move and start planting down roots! With many Canadian, Brit, Argentine, South African and Australian and New Zealand families joining too, now with active collaborations.

It's one of the biggest mission growth spurts we've ever seen in NW Greece, and already we've been able to bring in dozens of new recruits in our missions to Albania and Kosovo (bordering the region in Greece), achieving over 100 conversions just in our teams over the summer! A new church was built in a span of just 2 months over in SW Albania, lead by a Kosovo Albanian pastor who converted and joined the church last year. This is in addition to many Turkish and Syrian converts in Greece itself, given the history between Greece and Turkey, seeing this kind of friendship and fellow worship in Christ between the peoples is amazing!

Greetings Joey,
This is all great news! We have also been getting good news trickling in from our ministry teams in the Balkans and SE Europe and Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and increasing even portions of NW Turkey have been sites of great progress. Keep up your great work!

 

[JoeySoley]

Glad to spread the good news and good cheer! Our teams there are super motivated and well organized so expecting many many other good news updates too before the Advent season kicks in.

 

[Ceciledemarseilles]

We have also been seeing record conversion rates in our missions lately so delighted to see it happening in Greece and elsewhere around the continent! In France it's of course been very high among the Algerian and Tunisian populations, but we're also seeing high levels of conversion for the Albanian, Turkish, Arab and Iranian populations here. The highest we've seen. The breakthrough with the North African populations is of big importance because like it appears a lot of you have you been saying, they became our best evangelists back home. If it hasn't been mentioned already, many of the mountainous and Berber regions across Algeria and Tunisia have already been witnessing an incredible blossoming of new churches, for first time in centuries. Then now with the new group of converts coming in from France and nearby, they're able to connect and access resources they lacked before, leading to an even larger blossoming of churches across the region. I would say it's a miracle, but of course it's the fruit of a lot of hard work and dedication among our missions here. Our core of course is mostly Americans who've made their way into France but we now benefit from the contributions of mission members coming from all over the Americas and Oceania too. And miracles in their own way are happening becuase of it.

 

[Inhocsigno]

Greetings Cecile,
Miracles indeed! Thank you for using that word as it helps to capture one of the things that makes the mission experience special. It was something a few of our earlly mission teachers taught us years ago, that among the occupations we can engage in, missionary and evangelical work are truly unique in the way we can touch the hearts and waken the spirit in the people we reach. We make a critical difference in the converted and the evangelized, and for their children and children's children. There are few other things we engage in where we can genuinely make such a difference and a little miracle it does feel like when we reach our flock.

 

[JoeySoley]

Yes Epirus and NW Greece in general is one of the great frontiers missionary work, not just in Europe but globally. It's also great basic training for doing missions in a multi-ethnic region, with mix of secular and religious communities.

 

[JoeySoley]

And thanks for keeping us posted on the success with the missions in France and Germany! While we havent been directly involved, a few of our brother and sister churches from back in the US have been sending a lot of missionaries there, some involved like it sounds you are heavily with both rebuilding or building new parish churches, and with conversions of the Algerian, Tunisia and Moroccan and Egyptian populations, along with the Turkish and Syrian conversions that have been long in going. We've also been hearing great success lately, in fact I do recall one mentioning that many of the Algerian converts are connected to their Berber heritage, and become quite energetic missionaries back in Algeria and the whole region. Apparently dozens of new churches around the Atlas mountains in just the past 5 years springing up there!

 

[Inhocsigno]

Greetings Joey,
Thanks for keeping us updated and for all you're doing. The efforts among the Berbers (the Amazigh) have indeed been a highlight of recent missionary work, particular standing out because of their unique nature--reached largely indirectly through the efforts of converts among their compatriots doing temporary stays in Europe. This has been one of our most significant success stories and a major reason we have shifted our ministry focus generally to the European missions, as this has become a once in a millennium opportunity to make an historic difference. Glad to hear of success with parallel efforts there in the Balkans and in the 10/40 Window more generally. These efforts have been long in coming!

 

[Inhocsigno]

I would also add as mentioned in another thread, in addition to Berber areas these efforts have also been enjoying great success particularly in Syria and Turkey. Even though the civil war has finally been subsiding and many areas of Syria are becoming safe and rebuilding again, there is still a deep spiritual hunger and deficit in much of the country as Syrians from Europe and other countries return home. Many of the Syrians who left as refugees, whether going into Europe or in countries like Lebanon, have embraced the Gospels in the interim years, and are now incorporating new missions, charities and church building as part of their rebuilding efforts upon returning home, even including in many cases their kids born abroad who are now able to grow up as Christians in a new and reviving Syria re-connecting with its own roots in the church and ministries.

 

[rachelrising]

Pastors etc are looking for new people to become Christians and draw closer to God and to attend their services.
I cannot believe what happened today. Me and my mum will be attending a service for healing and wholeness before she travels in another church this Sunday. Some pastors certainly have been praying to draw people to the church and wondering why. The Wholeness was so good as well.

I went to the website looking for the times of the service. Everything but the times of the service was on the website. There was no mention of it. I couldn't believe it. There was mentions of social days everything but the central point of the website. People have probably gone looking to attend and not seen it an given up. I don't even attend that church and I noticed it. I had to text the pastor and them alert that on their website there is no of church services and times the central of the website. Please tell me when it is on for this Sunday I asked in the text. It was almost like these were the times of Paul early Christian when they were in secret.

The pastor texted me and said it was his shame that it wasn't there and he will address it urgently.

Please remember to draw people to God and if you have a website please remember to keep the times of the services as the most important thing and easy to locate.

I have tried to be a part of this change as well. I need to focus now on my health a bit more now as well. I will never stop giving my cards out as well.

Good luck with being a part of this change.

 

[Deeply Inspired Sally]

Hi there rachelrising, just wanted to reassure you you're not alone in such experiences, my mother, father, kids and extended family have often attended church services in varied locations and have had more than just one occasion of missing a service (or arriving an hour or two early) due to confusion about when the service was being held.

We're preparing now to head overseas for mission work and I can guarantee we've learned well the lesson you speak of here, particularly since different cultures, regions and cities often have widely divergent traditions for church services. The good news now is I believe many churches are using more of a common template for making announcements about schedules and services on their websites, blogs, flyers and other forms of communication, so it is a bit easier to get this information.

Though when all else fails, most pastors are quite the open and friendly people, and can be a good thing to reach out to them directly.

 

[rachelrising]

Thank goodness on this what I posted above about the website yesterday being absent of the church services. I got an update today. The vicar couldn't find it either yesterday on their website. They did contact the webmaster though who said it was on there. Under the home tab you had to click a box to view the services. It is good it was there thank goodness. However, it could be given more promenence a tab of its own. Also, the issue is if in this day and age you use a simple ad block and you use a drop down box on your website and don't put your church services on the main page some people will not be able to view it without turning it off.

 

[Deeply Inspired Sally]

That's great to hear! We're doing a little church tour of the Nordic countries coming up and have been looking through several websites too about the church information.

The auto-translate feature for websites and documents is amazing for these days, it really makes it easy to see the calendars and activities for the churches in any language in any country without their having to worry about translating for us, and they're usually well done put together. We're leaving for a major tour soon so looking like we'll basically be off-line for awhile, made sense then to just print and run off copies of the worship and service schedules for the churches we're visiting to take with us.

Of course since that's going to be where our mission focus is we're busy learning ourselves, Swedish, Norwegian and the other languages of the region, seems like they're close enough together it's not hard to learn the others if you pick up one. But never hurts to have some pre-printed schedules first, know what to expect.

We're still not sure exactly which of the countries we'll land in, but from what I know if you get settled in one of the Nordic countries you can go to the others to help out with missions there too. I just wish we had a bit more Swedish or Norwegian in the family background, not so sure how well our Irish, Italian, German, French or Polish will get us a passport for Sweden but we're working on it!

But it is nice for now at least, you can go visa free in Europe for around 3 months when just doing tours and getting a feel for the churches and where they need help with missions and church constructing, while preparing to make the permanent move there. It's one of the really nice things about Europe for Americans, there's so much history in even just small towns in Scandinavia you can spend weeks in one place learning something, especially if you make connections with the churches and pastors there.